Provision Zones

In my last post I talked about my Lab. This was one area I developed to respond to my unique culture and curriculum. I hope that you have begun to consider that some provision areas we take for granted don’t actually need to be put in place. I also hope you recognise that the most important thing is to choose areas that work for your children. Today let’s explore the idea of ‘zones.’ This idea may not work for everyone. If it doesn’t, can I suggest you return to this post in the future to see if some of my other content has changed your vier enough to make this work (trust me, sometimes that’s the case.)

Let’s delve in...

Zones mean that you group your typical provision areas into large spaces because many of the resources and the types of play you’ll see are connected.

This means that you can provide a single shelving unit/central station and add more resources for depth of learning.

Here are my recommendations for zones:

Let’s explore messy in a little more depth.

I used to have a single central station of beautiful tools (carefully linked to their culture and the curriculum intent) that can all be used in sand, water and the tuff spot. We also allowed children to move water and sand around in the different areas (but that could be a step too far for some.)

Now, what's happening with playdough and malleable?

Playdough has limits. You could add in playdough mats and ask them to do specific things with them like make legs for the caterpillar, but this is limited too. It's not open-ended and whilst it will support fine motor control, it won't do anything to support creative development.

My recommendation is to place your playdough in your home corner. This then means that children can use it to make a range of foods etc. This allows them to move beyond using moulded food in your kitchen to being able to create anything!